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Petroglyphs,
Pictographs, Rock Art

Mysterious Images On Stone - Page 2

by Jay W. Sharp

Exploring Rock Art Sites

You will find rock art sites, hundreds to thousands of years old, extending across the desert basin and mountain range country of the Southwest, from the Pecos River region in the east to southern California in the west, and from the Dinosaur National Monument in northern Utah and Colorado into northern Mexico’s desert basins and mountains. While many sites lie in remote areas on federal or state lands or on inaccessible areas in private lands, you will find spectacular sites open to visitors in all of our Southwestern states. The following list gives you a very brief sampling of easily accessible rock art sites:

Western Texas

Seminole Canyon State Park & Historic Site

Rock art: Some of America’s oldest and most spectacular pictographs, produced in rock shelters by hunting and gathering peoples thousands of years ago.

Rock art: Nearly all pictographs, including images produced by hunting and gathering peoples thousands of years ago; masks and other figures produced by artists from the Mogollon Puebloan tradition; ceremonial scenes done by Mescalero Apaches; and a possible battle scene done by Kiowas.

Rock art: Petroglyphs, most of them done during the Mogollon Puebloan period. With more than 20,000 individual designs, Three Rivers has one of the densest concentrations of prehistoric rock art in the world.

Location: Western flanks of the northern end of the Sacramento Mountain range.

I should warn you that you may find rock art beguiling. You may fall under its spell. I have acquaintances who have traveled throughout the Southwest, Spain and southern France, the Australian outback and several Latin America countries to explore rock art sites. You can find kindred spirits in numerous societies and associations across the Southwest, including, perhaps the largest and most well known:

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Mesa Verde - Video - Mesa Verde National Park preserves the remnants of the Anasazi people, "The Ancient Ones." The Cliff Palace, one of the park's most popular attractions, contains over 150 rooms and is the largest cliff dwelling in the world. The Anasazi built these elaborate structures without metal tools of any kind, and no one knows why the left. Take a look at this mysterious remnant of this elusive culture in this video.

Canyon de Chelly National Monument Video
Canyon de Chelly NM offers the opportunity to learn about Southwestern Indian history from the earliest Anasazi to the Navajo Indians who live and farm here today. Its primary attractions are ruins of Indian villages built between 350 and 1300 AD at the base of sheer red cliffs and in canyon wall caves.

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